HOVERTANK 3D
SHORT VERSION: Sometimes fun but also sometimes frustratingly flawed with its primitive nature, Id’s first FPS showed the promise of better things to come. Tanks for that!
LONG VERSION: It’s Id’s first FPS! No textures! No strafing! No doors! But it can still be fun.
So in this one, you’re in the titular tank, and must hover around various levels trying to pick up all the Keen-ish humans dotted around the map. Once you’ve found them all (or if they’ve been killed either by you or an enemy), an exit appears and you have to race towards it before time runs out and the level gets nuked.
There are only three types of enemies… some type of flying squid that ignores you and just hunts down and kills humans (it only hurts you if you run into it), some kind of big demon dude that attacks with melee punches, and rival tanks that shoot projectiles.
Action is a little slow because, though you can move at quite a fast clip with a button press, your cannon needs time to recharge after every shot. You only get three hits before you die, though some levels have health pickups.
Despite the very limited mechanics, Id managed to make most of the 20 levels feel distinct, both through layout and use of enemies (some only have one type, some combine them). They also colour coded different areas to make navigation easier, since quite a few levels can feel a bit maze-y.
And I had a good time with it for the most part! It’s a simple action game, where you try to track down targets with the help of the radar while dealing with enemies, then make an exciting getaway before the level’s time limit runs out.
It made me think… Descent is kind of a spiritual successor? That’s also a FPS where you’re going around in a vehicle, rescue hostages, and every level ends with a timed escape sequence.
There are of course problems, though! Especially in the second half of the 20 levels.
The biggest issue is the enemy AI… they tend to just bunch up together as they all head straight for you to the best of their ability (often piling up against a corner), so you’ll face no enemies until you bump into a sludge of like 15 of them. It’s not so bad if you wait around a corner and take them out one by one as best you can (though that doesn’t work well if they are overlapping too much in which case you’re probably going to die if they’re tanks), but that wastes time and also isn’t exactly thrilling. Catacomb 3D improved on this by adding doors/destructible walls.
Overall though, the combat just isn’t too exciting (it’s basically Battlezone), which is a big knock against the game. Trying to find all the humans and escaping definitely helped add more excitement to it, putting pressure on you.
It can also feel a bit RNG in regards to saving humans, sometimes you just can’t get to them fast enough before they get killed off. That’s not a big deal though, you don’t get punished aside from losing money/score at the end of the level, and you’ll always have enough to repair your vehicle.
More of a problem is that you don’t know where the exit will spawn, so there is a chance you won’t make it there before time runs out if you’re too far away, or if you just get lost in a maze-y level… if you replay the level you’ll know where the exit will be, but it was still frustrating having to replay a whole level.
You only have one life, but can start at any level of the game so it’s no big deal. You start with zero points, so I guess it’s an issue if you want a high score, but I didn’t care about that.
This game also has some goofy personality that I really enjoyed. George Lucas gives you mission briefings, and most are anti-corporation, anti-fascist stuff like saving people working on clean oil before a corporation nukes them. Then there is really goofy stuff like a museum being bombed by dadaists as a “form of anti-expression.”
Oh, and the sound effects are great, it’s just the team at Id recording themselves making goofy noises.
So yeah! It’s fun enough, but definitely flawed and more of a historical piece than a good game. Definitely shows the potential the team over there would eventually realise.
NOTE: A lot of people on Backloggd are complaining about turn speed, there is a button that speeds you up (including turning) and is the only way I managed to pass some levels before the time limit expired.
People also complain about the framerate chugging in later levels, again I didn’t have too much of an issue with that… perhaps I had my DOSBox running at higher cycles.